Our friend and occasional blogger Richard Stith recently explained The right reason for not funding Planned Parenthood. His explanation appears on the weblog of that admirable and useful organization University Faculty for Life.
You’ve missed their 2011 conference, held a couple of weeks ago. I had to miss it as well, but having been to three of them, can say that at them a good time is had by all, and much is learned by all.
While I’m pointing you to links, you might check out Richard Stith’s articles on the Social Science Research Network. They include “If Dorothy Had Not Had Toto to Pull Back the Wizard’s Curtain: The Fabrication of Human Rights as a World Religion” and “Excluding Religion Excludes More than Religion.”
June 25th, 2011 | 11:49 pm
What’s astonishing, is that we have an organization that contributes to the destruction of unborn human beings, and we’re paying for it!
Since abortion is legal (it shouldn’t be, but it is), if Planned Parenthood wishes to continue functioning, let it do what any other private entity has to do, get it’s own private funding.
June 26th, 2011 | 5:23 am
I oppose abortion under all circumstances, but I find this particular argument incoherent.
How can the members of an organization that does not dstribute its profits amongst its members benefit from one outcome of pregancy, rather than another?
Surely, the realargument against funding Planned Parenthood is that its policy (1) promotes muder and (2) its teachings are against public policy
June 26th, 2011 | 4:24 pm
I would think the point is not to “defund Planned Parenthood,” but to have a kind of domestic version of the Mexico City Policy as it existed under Republican presidents. Taxpayer dollars for abortion services are already prohibited, so the rule should be not to provide taxpayer dollars for non-abortion services to entities that, with other funds, provide abortions. This is what some bills have done, but I believe that when the House of Representatives voted on this issue, they simply passed a bill that prohibited funds from going to Planned Parenthood. That offered no guarantee that the funds diverted from Planned Parenthood would not go to other organizations that provide abortions, thus giving a boost to other abortion providers just to spite Planned Parenthood.
June 26th, 2011 | 6:32 pm
The “money” argument may be a bit weak, but the larger argument is that an organization that benefits from one particular outcome *but not the other* should not be funded for the process of helping people choose outcomes. Even if they’re not making a profit off of it, the people employed by the organization clearly have an interest in having their services utilized. And given the nature of this organization, whatever theoretically might be the case with organizations that lack a profit motive, we know that in this case there is an ideological inclination in favor of abortion at least in many circumstances, among much of the staff and management.
June 27th, 2011 | 9:25 am
pentamom,
Are you implying that Planned Parenthood might deliberately do a bad job of providing contraception services in the hopes that women would get pregnant and have abortions?
June 27th, 2011 | 10:10 am
David — I’m “implying” that it’s generally a universal principle that you don’t hold an entity as being disinterested when they’re not, and you don’t fund people to do what is supposed to be a balanced job of dealing with a situation, when there is an imbalance in their self-interest in the outcome.
And not, I don’t mean they provide “bad contraception services” in hopes of causing abortions — however, human beings being what they are, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that it has happened. I mean that when you go in seeking help in dealing with a pregnancy, PP is “more interested” (whatever that may mean) in providing abortions than in adoption services or other services relating to the bearing of the child.
June 27th, 2011 | 11:02 am
It is difficult to see how the fact that Planned Parenthood provides abortion services would interfere with their ability to do cancer screenings or STD testing. Although many of its opponents think of PP as an abortion provider, it is primarily a contraception provider. The idea that it might sabotage its contraception operation to generate more abortions is just too bizarre to entertain.
June 27th, 2011 | 11:15 am
“The idea that it might sabotage its contraception operation to generate more abortions is just too bizarre to entertain.”
And no one’s entertaining that, as far as I know. You just aren’t following the argument.
June 27th, 2011 | 11:21 am
“If Planned Parenthood didn’t receive this funding for health services millions would have to search for a provider of these lifesaving services they need. ”
Read that carefully. They’re not even asserting that those millions couldn’t find a provider, they’re merely saying that they’d “have to search for” one, probably because any claim larger than that is not supportable. (You don’t think they’d claim LESS than they can back up about their necessity to society?) Apparently now having to use the phone book or a call an agency for a referral is a violation of civil rights.
I’m not denying that those services might be hard to find for some of those millions, but you’ll notice that Planned Parenthood isn’t even claiming that, because it isn’t well enough established. I would guess there are very few places in Indiana that have PP clinics but no public health clinics or private doctors that accept public insurance.
The principle really is that hard, David. It is “an agency which deals in things destructive to people and society should not be funded regardless of what good things it does, because that compromises their value to society.” If they want to continue to do the good, they’re free to. They just need to knock of the “killing people” part.
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